“You can work for five decades in a lab, and nobody cares, and you’re on ‘The Colbert Report’ for five minutes, and people are, ‘Wow!’” he said, drawing laughter from students.

Agre is a physician, molecular biologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University. He received the Nobel Prize for his discovery of aquaporins, water-channel proteins that move water molecules through the cell membrane. He has since turned his focus to the study of malaria.

While at ECU, Agre also gave a lecture on aquaporins and visited with medical faculty members and administrators. He was in Greenville as a guest of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the medical school.